


we are waiting to be lit

by impossibletruths



Series: cr femslash fest 2k17 [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Background Vaxleth, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Femslash February, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9887246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing. To everything there is a season, after all. Sometimes, though, the gods are curious. And she will live such a long time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for day two of the cr femslash fest and based off an anonymous prompt. title from “hope in the air” by laura marling

“You’re fine,” he says when he starts awake, trembling and cold, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. He speaks to himself more than to her, quick and quiet. “You’re fine. She punishes unnaturally long life. Not you. You’re different.”

“I know,” she tells him, her hand brushing through his hair, chasing away the nightmares. “I know, Vax. I’m not worried.”

He shivers, mutters, falls back into a fitful sleep, and Keyleth silently asks the shadows to let them be.

 _He’s tired_ , she thinks, fierce and exhausted all in one, weariness sitting heavy in her bones. The slow drip of time ticks away the countless years that stretch before her and she lets them pass with a numb sort of acceptance. _He’s tired doing Your bidding, let him rest._  

The shadows flicker and shift, and Keyleth swears she hears the quiet croak of a raven as she curls herself tighter around Vax, a bright point among the dark.

The wind hows and hisses, slips through the cracks in their home to brush the wild mess of her hair, and soothes her to sleep.

* * *

_In her dream she walks a path made of ink and water, her footsteps pools of viscous color behind her, and golden thread arcs above, a canopy of shining twine. She stands beneath and stares up at the latticework spread of life, traces the weave and weft of innumerable threads and half-wonders which is hers, and which are theirs, and who has taken the time to weave such a messy, complicated fabric. In her dream, she doesn’t quite care._

Little mortal, _says the gentle and cold voice behind her,_ why are you here?

I’m dreaming, _she says._ I’m just dreaming.

_When she turns, the porcelain face is not what she expects. She expects horrible blankness, or a gaping maw, or empty eyes, but this is just a mask, a child’s toy, blank and dull and so utterly mundane that she laughs despite herself. The mask cocks to the side, dark hair tumbling round it like water, wild and free._

Little mortal, _the mask says._ You are not dreaming.

No, _she agrees, and her laugh cracks like fine china, and she is weary to her bones._ No, I guess not. I’d only like to be, for a little bit. If you don’t mind? It’s just kinda easier, you know.

Stay, then _, says the woman, and there is an echo in her light voice that vibrates in her bones._ Stay, little mortal. Rest a while.

* * *

“What’s it like?” she asks him one night in Whitestone, when he comes back with clammy skin and an eerie sort of calm. “What is she like?”

Keyleth does not believe in the gods. They act with too much freedom to earn her faith; the turning cycle of nature is never so unbound. But she is not so foolish as to think them absent. (She’s agnostic, she thinks to herself with something like a laugh, not a fool.)

“She’s cold,” he says, after a long and searching silence. “And sad. Unbearably sad. Unyielding. And beautiful. Though not as beautiful as you,” he adds, staring at her with the same quiet reverence he has always worn so well (and it is no shock, she thinks distantly, that he found faith eventually; he has always been a man seeking something to believe in). 

“Glad to know I can compete with a god,” she teases back.

“You could compete with anything you wanted,” he tells her, painfully honest. (For all his tricks and lies and past sins, he does not know how to be anything but honest.) “You’d win.”

She does not doubt that. It is always the cost she has wondered about.

Time drips slowly. Reckoning alway comes. That is the way of the world. Circles within circles.

She’d call it fate, but she does not believe in fate.

Nature is a kinder world for it. Everything has its season.

* * *

_Little mortal_ , says a quiet voice in her dream; it is soft and mournful and damns her with an unyielding iron bite. _Oh, but you will live a long, long time._

She wakes and does not remember the words, but a chill burrows into her heart and a raven feather lies on her pillow.

* * *

“She’s like life, you know,” Keyleth says, standing at the roaring edge of the mountain. If she jumped, the winds would catch her, blow her back like a wild leaf among the tempest, leave her bereft of breath and her pulse humming in her ears, wildly powerless until she chose to act. It has never been tempting like this, to fly free and trust in fate.

She has always been caught between flying and falling. This, she thinks for a wild moment, might be the answer she seeks.

Vax stand at her side, hands tight at his sides, and when she glances at him she thinks she sees the same instinct in his eyes, and that chills her more than her own wild carelessness ever has.

(They have always been tripping forward over their own two feet, headfirst into danger and heartache, and even here, among the Ashari, that does not change.)

“What d’you mean?” he asks, voice pitched to carry over the howl of the wind.

“Your goddess. She’s like life. She’s not this or that, really. She just is. It’s not so scary, when you think of it like that.”

He shifts back. “Kiki,” he says. “Come inside.”

“Alright,” she agrees easily, and the wind howls and claws at her as she turns her back, and she feels a hollow pity that she did not jump when she had the chance.

* * *

You are a curious thing, _says her dream, words a susurrus as she leaves a rainbow of ink-spill footprints in her wake, head canted back to stare at the brilliant tapestry above._

What d’you mean? _she asks of the golden threads, and the world sighs a breeze around her._

So much faith and so little belief. Or perhaps it is the other way around. You are a curiosity.

Oh _, she says._  Thanks, I  guess.

I am sorry, _whispers the voice, and when she looks up a mask of porcelain looms above, eyes peering through holes in the blanket of lives and souls above._  I truly am.

_What for, she wants to ask, but she is so weary. She will ask later. After all, she cannot change fate._

_To everything, there is a season._

* * *

The Ashari do not honor the gods, so she neither kneels nor prays, nor often think of it. Some nights she dreams of an empty expanse filled with golden thread, and there is not time here, nor life, nor death. There only is. The ticking drip of time leaves her be, for a while.

The Ashari do not honor the gods, so she neither kneels nor prays until after he is gone, and the grief is a yellowing bruise, a seeping pain only when she presses on it.

The Ashari do not honor the gods, so she neither kneels nor prays until after he is gone, when the winds are wild and the stars hidden by the clouds and the howling outside sounds like the caw of ravens. She sits cross-legged in the bed that is too large for her all alone and breathes the ozone smell she has known since she was a girl.

“I get it,” she says aloud to the emptiness of her home. “I understand.”

Her empty home does not answer.

“I’m tired,” she says aloud to the emptiness. “I just want to rest a while.”

Only the crackling fire listens.

“Time is long,” she says aloud. “Time is so, so long. How do you stand it?”

 _Little mortal_ , the wind whispers where it slips through the hollow places between the slats of her home. _Little mortal, that is what it means to be a god._

* * *

_The golden tapestry shifts in a breeze that does not exist, and she does not remember if this is a dream or not. Her footsteps leave ink-spill puddles in a kaleidoscope of color where she goes, and the flowers that bloom at her fingertips fall into nothingness, perfectly preserved and utterly dead._

Little mortal, _says the woman, and she is not surprised to see the looming mask._  What do you seek in this place?

Only a moment, _she says._ Please, I only need a moment.

Very well, _she says._ Take the time you need.

_That is the problem, she thinks to herself. She has far too much of it already. It is the absence she seeks._

_She sits tailor style in the dark, and color bleeds from her like oil in water, viscous and bright and seeping ever outwards, filling the dark._

* * *

There are things to do, of course. Time drips slowly, grinds down even the greatest of stones over the eons, and she is no different. But it is hard to feel time pass and remain young. She watches them all wither and die, and knows the natural order of things, and scrabbles for the dripping time but it trickles through her clawing fingers and leaves her all alone in its wake, a parched woman in a desert, the river ever just out of reach.

* * *

The Ashari do not pray, but she knows the gods too well to place her faith in them in the way of ordinary folk. Her communion is of a different sort.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” she says to the gasping winds, feet tucked beneath her, bereft of crown and cloak and the trappings of her office. She feels like she is still half a girl, waiting at the edge of the world. “I thought I was different.”

 _You are_ , the winds assure her.

“I don’t want it,” she says. “I never wanted it. It’s been so long. I’m just tired.”

 _Little mortal_ , the wind tells her. She has always cried too easily; now the curling winds brush the tears from her cheeks. _Little mortal, do not grieve. To each its own time, to each its own destiny._

“But I don’t want a destiny,” she says, forlorn, and she feels foolish as a child but cannot stop the words, the howling gale pulling them from her lips like truth. “I only want to rest. Is this a punishment? Is this my fault?”

_It is not so simple._

“So it is something I did. What, did I live too long? The story ended but I didn’t go with it?”

 _Little mortal_ ––

“I have a name.”

The wind quiets. Keyleth breathes. The air smells of ozone. Time drips ever on. She is so, so weary.

 _Keyleth._  The wind holds her name carefully within its twisting squall. _Yes. Keyleth._

* * *

(Here is a story: 

Death has been in love with Life for longer than words can name.

Death takes everything Life has to give, and holds these gifts close forever.

Death loves fierce and full, and cold and distant.

Here is a story: Life was not made to outlast Death. Such eternity would drive anything mad.)

* * *

_She dreams she is in her home, with the gale howling outside, but it is utterly still within. She knows it is a dream because her fingers leave bright ink stains where they brush her too-large bed, and because the there is no roof to her home, only the golden lattice of the tapestry. She closes her eyes and lies back anyways, and allows herself to be._

Keyleth.

_The woman stands at the edge of the bed, her mask simple and unassuming. She wonders if this is how he always saw her, and the thought unmoors her within her skin._

Do you have a name? _Keyleth wonders aloud, or what passes for aloud in a world of dreams like this one._ Is there something I can call you? It feels weird, you know. Not knowing what to call you.

Most call me Lady, _she says._  Or Queen.

That’s silly, _says Keyleth._ You’re only a person.

I am much more than that _, she says, and Keyleth shrugs and lies back._

I don’t mean it to be rude, _she says. She gave up sketching circles around her words a long time ago; if her thoughts are so determined to come out twisted and knotted she may as well live with it. She is too old now to care overmuch about all that, anyways._  But really, we all are. It all just is, isn’t it? It’s all just being.

_She is not sure the logic works, but this is a dream. Logic need not work in dreams; that is what makes them dreams._

Keyleth _, says the woman, and there is warmth in her voice, amusement, and Keyleth’s lips quirk as she stares blindly up at the lattice of souls._

Is it like stargazing? _she asks._ Only, I’ve never been that good at remembering the constellations. It’s so much more fun to make them up.

Stargazing _, says the woman, and Keyleth blindly pats the place next to her on the too-big bed._

_Everything stills. The wind falls silent. Keyleth opens her eyes._

_She stands at the edge of the bed, mask lowered, and Keyleth sees a woman, and only a woman, a little young and a little sad and very beautiful._

Keyleth _, she says. Keyleth shifts upon the bed, leaving room aplenty for the hesitant goddess._

C’mon, _she says._  Stargazing. Sort of. We’ll make do.

_The Raven Queen lies at her side. What a funny pair they must make, one burning hope and the other impartial fate. Keyleth reaches a hand up, sketches invisible lines between knotted points in the tapestry, too many lives caught up in one._

There’s a crescent there _, she says._ Maybe a moon. Or a plow. Plows are pretty popular constellations. I think it’s because a lot of people are farmers.

 _The Raven Queen shifts, and Keyleth’s wandering hand draws an image upon the glowing gold tapestry._ A tree. 

 _Another half-imagined image._ And a cross.

 _And another._  A river.

Yes, _says the Raven Queen, staring at the golden, twisting strand that runs through her tapestry, tributaries meeting and splitting off from the burning-bright flow of a singular life._  I see.

Who is that, I wonder, _Keyleth murmurs, and because it is a dream her voice is crystal clear._  Someone important, I suppose.

Keyleth, _says the Raven Queen._ Don’t you know?

_The Raven Queen twists her head, dark hair like water across the bedspread, mixing with the multicolor ink stain of Keyleth’s touch in this golden-dark dream world. Her eyes are not black at all, Keyleth notes. They are red as burning coals, and so weary. Keyleth knows that weariness._

Keyleth, _says the Raven Queen, when Keyleth does not answer._  It’s you, of course.

Oh, _says Keyleth._ Of course.

* * *

She stands at the roaring edge of the mountain, wind dragging her forward.

“She’s like life, you know,” Keyleth tells no one. She is older now. She found new strands of grey in her hair this morning. She wonders if it has anything to do with a woman bereft of her mask and gentle lips against her skin. “She just is. All we are is being, really.”

The wind howls and screams and does not answer. Keyleth spreads her arms.

The tempest catches her when she jumps, and she is nothing but a soaring leaf upon the wind, and she closes her eyes, and she trusts in the might of nature and the certainty of fate, and she is neither flying nor falling.

She simply is.

* * *

(Here is a story: Death has always been in love with Life. Life sends countless gifts to Death, and Death keeps them forever.)

(Here is a truth: Life and Death are only people, as all people are.)

(To everything, there is a season.)

**Author's Note:**

> now with fan art! [keyleth and the raven queen](https://pyrrhy.tumblr.com/post/160755578405/shed-call-it-fate-but-she-does-not-believe-in) by pyrryh on tumblr


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